' The Twa Corbies '
' The Wife of Usher's Well '
' A Lyke-Wake Dirge '
Introduced by W. L. Renwick
(From Stagshaw)
What is a ballad? Scores of experts have tried to answer this question and most of them have failed to find a definition more concise and more accurate than that in the ' Encyclopaedia Britannica ’:—‘A type of verse of unknown authorship, dealing with episode or simple motif rather than sustained theme, written in a stanzaic form, more or less fixed and suitable for oral transmission, and in its expression and treatment showing little or nothing of the finesse of deliberate art '. The three ballads to be given this evening are typical specimens of this art-form about which so little is known.